Announcement (15 July 2016)With the addition of a colonist bar to Alpha 14, it feels like a good time to be retiring my interface mods.

It's been immensely satisfying working on these mods and seeing aspects of them make it into the vanilla game, but it's difficult as a modder to not eventually lose interest and move onto other things.

I appreciate all of the kind words and feedback from what really is a great community and look forward to seeing what's next for this great game.

EdB Interface Mods

The EdB Interface consists of a set individual mods that change the game's user interface, adding new utilities and tweaking the vanilla game to make it easier to interact with.

Where is the Alpha 13 Version? (Updated 30 Apr 2016)

I'm working on it. I've made the decision to split the interface mod into multiple smaller mods. There are a handful of reasons that I'm doing this, and while it makes it a little less convenient for people to download and install, I think it's for the best in the long run.

I'm still not sure when I'll be finished, but you can expect releases of various mods as I move forward. Currently, early releases of the Colonist Bar mod and the Inventory mod are available.

IMPORTANT: This is a simple version of the colonist bar only. No squad management; none of the other interface tweaks. I would still consider this a "beta" release, but early issues have been resolved. I think it's fairly stable. Just as warning, the mod is a "map component" mod. This means that if save your game with the mod enabled, you will get an error message if you try to load the game without the mod enabled. This error should actually be harmless, but be aware of it before you try adding a mod that potentially still has bugs to a new game. Also, it means that you must start a new game to get the colonist bar. You cannot add it to an existing game without modifying your save file.

IMPORTANT: This is the first release of a standalone mod for the Inventory Tab. I expect that this release has a couple of bugs, but if you're interested in testing it out, please do, and let me know if you run into any issues.

About the Alpha 12 Version

Version 3.1.2 is the second Alpha 12 release of the mod. Please report any problems that you might run into. I'm sure there are still a few in there. This release fixes a minor bug that was in the previous release, related to the display of the mood indicators in the Needs panel.

A lot has changed in the Alpha 12 release (some which is behind the scenes in the form of a significant code rewrite). The biggest new feature is the addition of squad management. By organizing your colonists into squads, the colonist bar can remain useful for those who like to grow their colonies to be very large. Other additions include:

Click the Squads button along the bottom of the screen to bring up the Squad Management window. Organize your squads here.

Browse squads from the Colonist Bar with the new browse buttons that appear when you have more than one squad.

Configure keyboard shortcuts for your squads in the vanilla Keyboard Configuration dialog. Use the shortcut to quickly select squads. Shift- or control press the key to assign a squad to the configured shortcut. Press the key once to display the squad in the colonist bar. Press the key twice to select all colonists in the squad.

Added a squad filter to the Work, Outfits and Restrictions windows. Choose a squad and only those colonists will be displayed in the list.

Added a row to the top of the Work, Outfits and Restrictions windows. Select an option in this row to assign it to all of the colonists in the list.

Added an option to display the current time using a more recognizable "hours:minutes" format instead of the vanilla "10h" format. Not enabled by default.

Added options to hide any button along the bottom of the screen that you don't use very often. This can be especially useful for users with smaller screen resolutions.

Downloading from Nexus Mods should not require that you create an account over there, but if you'd prefer an alternate place from which to download, you can log in to the Ludeon Forums and download the mod from the attachment at the bottom of this post or use the Dropbox link below.Download 3.1.2 for Alpha 12d (Dropbox)

Known Issues

The latest version of the mod works with the Alpha 12d release of the game. It will not work with earlier Alpha 12 releases.

More About the Mod

The mod makes the following adjustments to the user interface:

Adds the Colonist Bar along the top of the gameplay window, giving you another way to select colonists and to quickly see their status.

Organize your colonists into squads using the Squads window and display them by squad in the colonist bar. Assign keyboard shortcuts to quickly display and select your squads.

Look at the Interface Options dialog, which you can get to by clicking on the gameplay Menu. From here you can disable any of the mod's features that you don't like.

See the changelog below for a full list of additions and changes.

Some features are better suited for larger window sizes, but if you're running in a smaller window, you can shut off the features that do not work as well.

Downloading from Nexus Mods should not require that you create an account over there, but if you'd prefer an alternate place from which to download, you can log in to the Ludeon Forums and download the mod from the attachment at the bottom of this post or use the Dropbox link below.Download 3.1.2 for Alpha 12d (Dropbox)

To install, simply extract the contents of the zip file into the RimWorld mods directory. If you have a previous version installed, please remove that version first.

The most common problem that people run into is that they double-extract the mod folder from the zip file. If the interface changes are not appearing for you, make sure that you have not ended up with an extra directory inside your mod folder. The mod contents should be in the "Mods/EdBInterface" directory, NOT in a "Mods/EdBInterface/EdBInterface" directory.

- Added support for Alpha 12. - Added the Squads main menu tab. Use it to organize your colonists into squads. Squads are displayed in the colonist bar. - Assign keyboard shortcuts to each squad in the Keyboard Configuration. Single-press to display the squad in the colonist bar. Double-press to select all of the colonists in the squad. - Select a squad in the Work, Outfits and Restrictions windows to filter the list to only include those colonists in the squad. - Added an extra row to the top of the Work, Outfits and Restrictions windows that allows you make an assignment to all of the colonists in the list. - Added an alternate time display so that the current game time is displayed with hours and minutes instead of the vanilla "8h" display. Optionally display the time with AM/PM. - Rewrote much of the colonist tracking system that notifies the colonist bar when a colonist's status changes. - The colonist bar now shows when colonists are in cryptosleep. - Added the ability to hide the main tab buttons along the bottom of the screen. - Added finer grain control over which alternate tabs you want to use. - Reworked all of the alternate tabs. Added an alternate for the Training tab. - Added an option to display a close button as an "X" in the upper-right corner of all of the main tab windows. - Removed the "Colonist" button that was in the lower-left corner of the interface in previous versions. - Removed the preference to auto-enable/disable alternate tabs based on your screen size. The default setting is selected based on your screen size, but you need to manually enable/disable the various tabs. - BUGFIX: Doing a better job of cropping long pawn names in the colonist bar.

This is amazing just yesterday I was thinking to myself why do I have to hunt down my colonist in order to find them and equip them for battle. You've done something real good I hope you keep up the great work

Released a new version (1.1.1). It contains a couple of bug fixes, and I changed the hooks that initialize the mod so that it's now more compatible with other mods. It also adjusts the Bills tab to include the repeat options in the tab itself (instead of having to open the "Config" dialog to get to them).

I appreciate all of the positive feedback.

Full changelog for Version 1.1.1:

BUGFIX: Next and previous buttons in the "Status" tab should no longer appear as green or red buttons.

Released a new version for Alpha 6. Also contains a bug fix to stop the initialization definition from appearing in stockpiles.

Full changelog for Version 1.2.1:

Supports Alpha 6

Split the "Status" tab back out into "Health" and "Thoughts" tabs to match the vanilla game, but moved the Food and Sleep meters from the Health tab into the Thoughts tab.

Renamed translation keys to avoid naming conflicts with vanilla or other mods.

BUGFIX: The initializer is now defined as a building instead of as a pawn, which fixes a couple of issues. Initializer definition no longer appears in stockpiles under the animal corpses and meat sections. Games saved while the mod was enabled should now load when the mod is disabled without the "Could not load reference to EdBInterface_Meat/Corpse" errors. Saved games from previous versions will need to be saved again to remove these errors.

I really enjoy using this, but I'm forced to disable it because of my resolution at 1024x768 . Would it be possible to make a wide variant of the interface, instead of one that's so tall? I wouldn't want to badger if it's too much hassle, but this mod really does make things more pleasant for me, and I'd love to continue using it.

Would it be possible to make a wide variant of the interface, instead of one that's so tall?

I've released a new version that addresses this issue. For screen resolutions with a height of less than 900 pixels, the mod keeps the tab panels from the vanilla game. You lose some of the layout tweaks, but you still get the Colonist button, the next and previous arrow buttons and the changes to the Bills tab.

Full changelog for version 1.2.2:

Added support for windows smaller than 900 pixels high. Uses the tab panels from the vanilla game in these cases, with the next and previous colonist arrow buttons added to them. The mod decides which tab panels to use when it switches into gameplay mode from the main menu. If you change your resolution in the middle of a game, the tab panels will not change. Save your game, go to the main menu and reload it to get the panels to switch.